Why should I believe in your religion and faith? (ritual, Creator)

[crystalonyx]

Originally Posted by Katzpur

I'm referring to my belief that I believe the entire gospel plan was known to and practiced by Adam.

.

Adam, like Jesus, was a myth, the gospels couldn't even get the supposed lineage of the supposed Jesus straight between gospels.

[Popeyesays]

Originally Posted by crystalonyx

Adam, like Jesus, was a myth, the gospels couldn't even the the supposed lineage of the supposed Jesus straight between gospels.

That depends upon whom you believe Adam to be.

There are two lineages because ONE lineage is expressed through Joseph and the other is through Mary. The one through Mary is kind of a ontrivane since the descent of the mother is no way as important in Judaism whih is patriarhal, not matrilineal.

Regards,
Scott

[crystalonyx]

Originally Posted by Popeyesays

That depends upon whom you believe Adam to be.

There are two lineages because ONE lineage is expressed through Joseph and the other is through Mary. The one through Mary is kind of a ontrivane since the descent of the mother is no way as important in Judaism whih is patriarhal, not matrilineal.

Regards,
Scott

You do realize these so-called lineages are completely contrived?

[Fish-Hunter]

This Thread has had 1,049 views with 112 replies in a few days. I appreciate all of the sharing and kindness shown by all who are willing to respond. I hope everyone will continue to contemplate and continue to share your thoughts. It's good to challenge each other to go beyond our status quo. I still believe truth is absoulte and is independent from personal observation of that truth. However, I don't think I have read objective evidence to support someone's perspective of the objective truth. I hope everyone will re-examine what they believe and share why they believe in what they believe. Are your reasons purley subjective verified by personal preferences which appear to be driven by our life experiences. Or, can objective evidence be presented to support a person's religion and faith? I think objective evidence can be sources outside a particluar faith or religion. Or maybe objective evidence could validate a particular religious source or book from an outside independent source of that particular faith or religion. For instance, secular history seems to validate the Christian Bible as historically accurate in regards to actual places and actual tribes and races of people written about in the Christian Bible.

[RedRain]

Here's some evidence as to the claims of Emanuel Swedenborg being genuine. Take them as mere stories if you wish.

First let me explain what Swedenborg's claims are. He claims to have been allowed to be in the other world, which he calls the spiritual world, at the same time as he was in this world. In the other world he talked with spirits from both heaven and hell and this is how he knows so much about heaven, hell, God and the history of the human race.

Some evidence for the validity of his claims can be found in these few stories, I will quote them from this website, Teh Swedenborgian Church in San Francisco: The Maritime Heritage Project with News of Captains, Ships and Passengers in 1800s San Francisco , to preserve accuracy:

On the 19th July, 1759, Swedenborg arrived from England at Gottenburgh, which is three hundred miles distant from Stockholm, and dined that evening at the house of Mr. Wm. Castel, with a party of fifteen persons. About six o�clock, he went out, but shortly returned, ;ale and alarmed, saying that a great fire had broken out and was then raging at Stockholm. At eight o�clock, having been out again, he returned, exclaiming: " Thank God, the fire is extinguished the third door from my house." Two days afterwards a messenger arrived from Stockholm who had been despatched during the fire, and on the third day the royal courier arrived, and both brought accounts describing the fire, etc., precisely in the manner in which Swedenborg had done.

Second instance, in 1761, at Stockholm, he was consulted by a lady, the widow of Louis Von Martinville, who had been ambassador from Holland to Sweden. Her husband had paid away twenty-five thousand Dutch guilders, and she being applied to again for the money could not produce the receipt. She asked Swedenborg to enquire about it of her husband who was in the spirit world. Eight days afterwards Von Martinville told her in a dream where to find the receipt, which at 2 o�clock in the mornign she found as directed. She then slept till late, and at 11 A.M., Swedenborg was announced. His first remarks before she could open her lips was, that "during the preceding night he had seen Von Martinville, and had wished to converse with him, but the latter excused himself on the ground that he must go to discover to his wife something of importance."

There are a few more stories on that site similar to these. The main evidence for me lies in his work on correspondences, where he goes through story by story of the first books of the Bible, describing what each thing in each story signifies in what he calls the internal or spiritual sense. The consistency of it and of his work is amazing, especially considering that he had more than 30 books of published theology.

[Katzpur]

Originally Posted by Fish-Hunter

Do Mormons believe like traditional Christians that the Bible to be God-breathed, or the Word of God? I think traditional Christianity would consider the Bible to be Holy revelation from God, using religious men to write down God's truth for mankind to know. Therefore, I think traditional Christians would say the author of the Christian Bible is the Christian God Himself, as compared to being a religious book authored by religious men. Is this correct.

I don't really make a distinction between the phrase "God-breathed" and "the Word of God." To me, they mean essentially the same thing. As far as what traditional Christianity considers the Bible to be, I can absolutely guarantee that it is divided on the issue. Some traditional Christians believe it is literally, a word-for-word account of what God said and told man to record. At the other end of the spectrum, you'll find other traditional Christians who believe it was written by holy men who, inspired by the Holy Ghost, wrote what they believed God wanted them to reveal to mankind. The LDS view is somewhere in between. We believe that God has, in fact, spoken to prophets from the beginning of time. He has impressed upon their minds certain spiritual truths and has directed them in expressing these truths so that the pure in heart could understand them and thereby be better able to understand Him and their relationship to Him. Were the words they recorded His words -- verbatim? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But they were spoken with the authority given by God to His servants. We're speaking here of the original documents as penned thousands of years ago, not of the oldest transcription and certainly not of every one of the hundreds of different translations in existence. The fact is, we do not have a single solitary original manuscript as penned by one of God's prophets. All we have are copies of copies of copies of copies.

God doesn't make mistakes, but men do, and regardless of how perfect the original words of the prophets may have been, it is -- in my opinion -- naive to think that no errors ever crept in to a copied manuscript, no phrase was ever accidentally omitted, no word written illegibly and consequently miscopied. And that's before we even get to the translation process. Surely you realize how difficult it can be to translate an idiomatic phrase from one language to another, or even to choose the best of several words to convey what the original author wanted to say. Compare several of the better known translations available today. Sure, they all say essentially the same thing. But is "essentially the same" good enough for someone who is searching for absolute truth? Finally, the Biblical canon has changed over the centuries. I won't go into that point in detail now, but this is a matter of historical record. Books that are in most of today's Bibles were not always in some of the earlier versions of the Bible, and there are more than twenty instances where a book is mentioned somewhere in the Bible, but cannot be found anywhere in "the word of God." So, how do the Latter-day Saints see the Bible? It is named as the foremost among our "Standard Works." We believe it is God's word, to whatever extent it was preserved as originally written and to whatever extent it was translated by divine inspiration. It is not, however, the only record of God's dealings with human kind. That belief is where we part ways with traditional Christianity because, as I already said, you will find as many traditional Christian views on the inerrancy of the Bible as there are traditional Christians.

I'm not sure if the learned Roman Catholic man above considered all the possibilities with his conclusion. He states the issue is between Catholicism and Mormonism. He said if the Catholics are right, then the Mormons are wrong. But if the Mormons are right, then the Catholics are wrong; "and that's all there is to it". That doesn't seem to be the only possibility because the third choice would be that both the Mormons and Roman Catholics are wrong at the same time. I'm not trying to be disrespectful or rude, but sometimes intelligent people seem to check their brains at the door when discussing religion...LOL. It doesn't seem the learned Roman Catholic man liked Protestant Christians very much.

I'll go along with you, at least to some extent. There is obviously the possibility that neither Mormonism or Catholicism contains the "absolute truth" about God. I have also wondered why he did not mention Eastern Orthodoxy as a possibility, since it also claims to be "the only true Church," and seems to me to have as much right to this claim as Roman Catholicism. I don't think his statement on Protestantism reflected a dislike for Protestants, but was merely an observation. (It was, after all, the Mormons, not the Protestants, he referred to as "ignoramuses." ) To me, it was an observation that made sense. Speaking strictly from the perspective that God's true Church must operate under the authority only He can impart, I can't understand how a Church that doesn't even claim to have that authority could possibly have it. I share his opinion (except that I would add Eastern Orthodoxy to the list of possible candidates and would also admit to the possibility than there is no true Church on the face of the earth today). This is not to say that I don't like Protestants, only that I don't see them as even potentially having "absolute truth."

I read your pubic profile because you seemed to be very caring, articulate, and intelligent. I really enjoy reading your responses to me!

Thank you very much, Fish-Hunter. I try to be caring, and I suppose that on a good day, I might also be considered articulate and intelligent.

It seems you have been blessed with a wonderful life and have much to be thankful for.

Definitely an understatement.

It is quite interesting that you consider yourself a lifetime LDS Christian. I take it you were born into a Mormon home. Isn't Salt Lake City the Mormon Vatican too?

Yes, the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is in Salt Lake City.

It seems that you wrote somewhere that your faith is based on the Mormon Church to be apostolic or has been given authority above all other religions. You implied that if the LDS Church does not have this authority, then you do not have the absolute truth that I am seeking. At least, I have interpreted you words that way.

That would be a fair assessment of what I've said.

[Katzpur]

I hope you will take the personal challenge to present objective evidence for the Mormon Church's authority over all religions.

I wish I knew what you would consider to be compelling evidence. May I call your attention to Matthew 16:15-17, which says:

"He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven."

Christ posed His question to all of His Apostles. Of the twelve, Peter alone responded with an answer that confirmed to Jesus the fact that Peter's knowledge was based upon what all spiritual knowledge is based upon: a witness from our Father in Heaven, received through the Holy Ghost. Jesus specifically pointed out that we come to know and understand eternal truths not by having another human being (i.e. "flesh and blood") provide us with "objective evidence" but from the Source of truth itself. You would like me to do something that Jesus indicated was a less reliable means of discerning truth than the way Peter recognized it. I know that there isn't anything I could say that would convince you that what I believe is true. That's something you will have to find out the same way Peter found out who Christ was. I will, however, tell you two things that have led me to conclude that absolute truth is found within my Church's teachings, but I won't go into detail on either of these things -- at least not for the time being. This post is already getting too long.

First, there is a great deal of internal consistency within the teachings of my Church. For instance, we see no dilemma at all in the fact that is through Jesus Christ alone that we may be forgiven of our sins and reconciled to our Father in Heaven and the fact that there are literally hundreds of millions of people who lived and died without ever even having heard of Jesus Christ. Our teachings address what, to traditional Christianity, is an awkward question for which the only possible answers are: (1) God will simply turn a blind eye to the fact that so many of His children didn't have the opportunity to obey His commandment to believe on His Son, (2) He will judge these unfortunate souls not on the basis of what they believed, but on what they supposedly would have believed had they been given the chance to choose for themselves, (3) All of the non-believers will, in fact, be destined to eternal punishment for the "sin" of having been born at the wrong time or in the wrong place. None of these answers is satisfactory, to my way of thinking. I won't go into the details of the LDS doctrine of salvation at this point, but I will say that it satisfies the demands of both justice and mercy, and does not contradict anything the Bible has to say.

Second, I have a testimony of the truth of the Book of Mormon. It would be silly for us to try to discuss a book which you have not read, so I'm not even going to try. I am absolutely convinced, however, that it could not have been written by a person with a third-grade education. Anti-Mormons will tell you that archeology has disproved it. This is not the case. Archeology has neither proven nor disproved it. Over the years, many of the things our critics have used as proof against the book have turned out to be good evidence that it is, in fact, what it purports to be. At this point, the archeological evidence is growing, but definitely not conclusive one way or the other. The linguistic evidences, on the other hand, overwhelmingly point to the fact that the book was written by multiple ancient authors and not a single nineteenth-century author. The extensive use of chiasms alone simply cannot be explained if one tries to credit Joseph Smith with the authorship of the book. The book also goes into an incredible amount of detail regarding subjects of which Joseph could not possibly have had any knowledge. Rather than mentioning any of these, let me just direct you to a worthwhile link: Book of Mormon Evidences.

I wonder if you were born in another place, time, and home with a different religion if you would have chosen the Mormon Faith later in life? For instance, what happened if your were born in India to parents of the Hindu religion, do you think you would still have come to the Mormon Faith? If you were born in Rome, Italy into a Roman Catholic home, do you think you would be Roman Catholic or Mormon? I don't mean to be too aggressive with my questions, but it seems you would welcome the difficult questions in your desire to help others.

It's hard for me to say whether I'd have chosen to embrace Mormonism had I been born in another time or place. I like to think that if I had been born to the same parents as I was, but that if they were Protestant or Catholic, I would have recognized the truths found in Mormonism had I been exposed to them. I know that my parents both encouraged their kids to learn the truth for themselves and not rely on what someone else told us. I can remember many times when my Dad said to me, "Kathryn, you can't believe everything you ever heard spoken from the pulpit." My parents encouraged me to question. In my household, doubting was a good thing, provided it resulted in a through search for the answers. So I can say that, even though I was raised Mormon, I came to my conclusions through study and prayer. I have never accepted any of my Church's teachings simply because my parents told me they were true. I think that would have really disappointed them. That said, there are many people who do not have the luxury of choosing a religion. They are not only born to parents who teach them what they should believe, but are raised in a culture where freedom of religion is prohibited and where one religion is mandated by the state. Of course, as a Latter-day Saint, I know that this would not have ultimately mattered, since God has addressed that possibility in His Plan. I know He would have expected me to do everything within my power to find the truth, but if I died without having found it, all would not be lost. In other words, had I been born in Iraq, I would probably be a Muslim today. My knowledge of what I believe to be absolute truth is a great source of strength to me, but I don't think it is ultimately going to mean that I end up in a better place than I would be had I born born in Iraq, for instance.

You are right when you say that I welcome difficult questions. I don't shy away from questions that make me stop and think, but I'm not all that sure that my answers are really providing you with what you want. I guess that, as long as you keep asking questions, though, I'll assume that you're finding my answers to be adequate. I'm sure that some of what I've said in the last two posts will raise additional questions in your mind. Please don't hesitate to ask them.

God bless,
Kathryn

[Don Penguinoini]

No need. Only if you feel the need. If you don't feel the need, then it is not important.